The Birthday Party - Good as it Gets

Here we are at Ciao Bellas',  yet again.  A happy crew and a low key night celebrating Sararosa's 12th birthday.  She gets older but the rest of this gang just stays put and is doing the Benjamin Buttons thing and getting younger. 

Mom smiles and looks at us and tries to add to the conversation but this is especially difficult to do in a noisy crowded place. We all have a difficult time hearing one another and much of the conversation was dead ending because of that.  Note to self and others, eat outside where mom can comment on planes, flowers and the beautiful night and we can all hear one another.


As we left and headed for home mom notices the roses and the people and the busy street.  She never missed a thing when we were kids.  If we took something like alcohol from the cabinet she noticed the bottles rearranged.  She noticed the good and the bad, the flowers and the beautiful sunset as well as the wool we tried to pull over her eyes.  She continues to have keen senses of sight and sound.  She can hear things most of us can't and she notices small details, like fuzz ball on sweaters. 

In a year Sararosa will be a Bat Mitzvah and I wonder where things will stand with mom and dad and the rest of us for that matter.  For so much of life we look forward to the next age or the next year.  But part of me wants to freeze frame this time for a bit longer.  Sararosa is a beautiful young woman still liking to be with her parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles.   Dad is looking good and thinking more clearly these days and mom is in good spirits.  The rest of us in this picture are happy, healthy,  and loved and in love. What  is ahead for this crew?  We all know Sararosa will become a teen, and the rest of us will grow old watching her go through it.  I brace myself.  But tonight we are just right.    It is as Good as it Gets and we are lucky in so many ways.